1938 Studebaker Commander convertible

Graham White fell in love with the Studebaker, and its owner, and the love lasts, writes KEVIN NORBURY.

24 August 2010Kevin Norbury

1938 Studebaker Commander convertible

Beauty of Primrose

She's a yellowy-blonde, lithe in body, a 1930s original and, with the top down, purrs like a kitten. Oh, yes, her name's Primrose, and she has a not-so-secret admirer by the name of Graham White, a near-50-something graphics production director.

Graham keeps her behind his home in one of Melbourne's southern suburbs. "There's Primrose," he says, casually waving his hands towards this amazingly original 1938 primrose-yellow Studebaker Commander convertible backed into his garage.

Graham and Primrose go back a long way. He's owned the car for about 15 years, but his association with it goes back more than 30. Graham grew up in Bacchus Marsh and in the late 1970s rented a house in Jolimont Terrace, East Melbourne, to go to art school.

"That's where I met Primrose," he says. "I saw this yellow, whitewalled-tyred Studebaker convertible parked in the street." It was, by all accounts, love at first sight, and it didn't take him long to discover Primrose was owned by the woman next door.

Now Isabelle J.H. Anderson - Jo to her friends - was in her late 70s, and quite an identity in East Melbourne. Graham found "Miss Anderson", as he knew her at first, to be as fascinating as the car she owned. "She was an unbelievably unique woman and had a unique style," he says. "She wore three-piece pin-striped men's suits and a beaded beret, and carried an ivory cane. Always had a cane. A real class act." (He also claims she slept with a derringer under her pillow.)

Later, says Graham, he did the maintenance on Primrose and every Sunday, Jo would drive the car to Scots' Church in the city and, in times of drought, to the Yarra Valley loaded with bales of hay to feed the farm animals.

Yes, Graham admits, he fell in love with Primrose. "And her, too," he volunteers, referring to Jo. "I was an impressionable young bloke. She was fascinating to talk to. And she was interested in art and cars and design, and so was I."

When Jo became too old to drive, Graham chauffeured her to church, "then I'd head to Carlton for coffee". After he graduated "and headed off into graphics land", as he puts it, he kept in touch with Jo, as did his parents, who had got to know her.

At one stage, says Graham, Jo told him the Studebaker Corporation in America wanted to buy the car back because it was one of the few Commander convertibles ever built. But she wanted it to stay in Australia. "I couldn't afford it," he says. So his father bought it, Jo moved into a retirement home and soon after died. Jack White had the car for 15 years and took it to several car rallies before selling it to his son. At one rally, says Graham, his father met Carol Studebaker, grandson of the founder, who told him he had "never seen one of these" (a '38 convertible).

Studebaker took photographs and the compliance plate numbers back to the US and later called to say Primrose had indeed come from the factory. Graham says the car came to Australia as an exhibit for the 1938 Sydney and Melbourne motor shows, but when war broke out it was never returned to the US. Jo Anderson bought it from Devon Motors in Lonsdale Street. Graham still has her Owner's Certificate and the hand-typed instructions on how to put the roof down.

The car is original inside and out, although Graham bought new whitewall tyres for it. The paintwork hasn't been touched, apart from some work on the mudguards.

"Totally original number plates, original everything," he says, including the well-worn blue-green leather upholstery.

Graham opens one of the car's four doors and gently pushes it. It clicks shut. "They've never been touched. They shut like the day they were made." All the fittings are nickel-plated, as is the surrounds on the split-windscreen and wind-up windows.

He says the side-valve six-cylinder engine, buried deep below the long bonnet, has done less than 100,000 miles (160,000 km). "The engine and gearbox (three-speed with freewheeling overdrive) is original. I've replaced a broken axle and rebuilt the diff. That's the only mechanical things I've done to it."

The gears are changed using a small, vacuum-assisted lever on the dash. A separate push-pull switch activates overdrive. Quite unique is the car's "automatic hill holder", a ball-in-a-cylinder affair. On a hill, the ball rolls back on to a seat and maintains pressure in the brake lines so the car stays put until you're ready to move off. "I don't understand why that's not on cars now. It's so simple," says Graham.

The hood is manually operated. "You can do it by yourself, but it's a hell of a lot easier with two people. It's fully quilted and lined with nickel-plated bows."

Graham describes Primrose as "an absolute pleasure" to drive. "There's nothing quite like driving a big old convertible on a nice warm night," he says, and likens the car to a time capsule. "I used to see Jo in the car. She looked straight out of Hollywood. When I'm driving the car, it brings back all those memories."

Autobiography

In the 1930s, Studebaker built six-cylinder and eight-cylinder cars as well as trucks. Up to 1937, the "big six" was called the Dictator and the "straight eight" the President.

The story goes that with the threat of war and Hitler's reputation as a dictator, Studebaker changed the name of the Dictator to the Commander in 1938, but the straight eight kept the name of President.

The Commander was built as a four-door sedan and two-door businessman's coupe. The same configuration was offered in the President.

According to company records, altogether only 19 convertibles were made in the series - either eight Commanders and 11 Presidents, or the other way around.

Two convertibles are believed to have come to Australia, the primrose Commander featured here and a black President, which is said to have ultimately gone back to America via New Zealand.

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The size of your tyre is located on the sidewall of your tyre.It will be similar to the sample below.